KOCHI: Even as the admission process for medical PG and UG is being rolled in now, admissions under deemed universities have become a matter of serious concern despite NEET being made applicable to them. Experts point out that lack of regulation on fees in UG and PG medical seats in deemed universities is affecting the admission to these seats. Centralised counselling is made for PG medical seats for the first time this year.
There are over 9000 MBBS and BDS seats together in 35 medical and over 30 dental colleges under deemed universities across the country. However, after the first and second and the mop-up round of counselling held by the Medical Counselling Committee under Director General of Health Services (DGHS) to these seats, half of them remained vacant due to high fees last year. It is still not in public domain how they were filled later. The fee ranged from Rs 9 lakh to Rs 22 lakh per year.
“Even this was a very high fee, and meritorious students also opted out because of which such a large amount of seats fell vacant. There were over 6.5 lakh students in the NEET rank list and students having ranks below 6 lakh also took admission to UG medical seats last year in the normal counselling. One is left wondering how the remaining seats were filled,” said Dr S Rajookrishnan, former joint commissioner of entrance examinations, Kerala. He said that merit and quality are seriously affected in admissions when the fee goes up phenomenally high.
“The Supreme Court had allowed the management to fill the vacant seats but whether they were filled and up to which rank are still not known,” he said. “As in the case of state admissions, a fee regulatory committee should be appointed at the national level for deemed universities to regulate the fee for UG and PG medical admissions to enforce merit.”
“It was for the first time that centralised counselling was made applicable in the case of UG admissions last year and in the case of PG, it is being made applicable this year. Brokers are already in the market trading seats for high sums, especially PG seats. So the fee regulatory committee, as directed by the Madras High Court and the Supreme Court, should be made applicable in the case of deemed universities,” said a parent from Kozhikode.
